Professor Norm Matloff's H-1B Web Page

Contents:

The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto
indentured labor.

The tech industry lobbyists portray H-1B as a remedy for labor
shortages and as a means of hiring "the best and the brightest" from
around the world. Though I strongly support that latter goal, the
lobbyists' "best and brightest" claims are not valid.

The vast majority of H-1Bs, including those hired from U.S.
universities, are ordinary people doing ordinary work, not the best
and the brightest. On the contrary, the average quality
of the H-1Bs is LOWER than that of the Americans.

Furthermore, vast majority of H-1Bs, again including those hired from U.S.
universities, are not doing work for which qualifed Americans are
unavailable.

Both types of wage savings are fully LEGAL, due to loopholes in
the law and regulations. The problem is NOT one of lack of
enforcement.

For many tech employers, having immobile workers is even more
important than having cheap labor. If an engineer leaves an employer
in the midst of an urgent project, this can be a major problem for
the employer. The H-1B and green card programs give the employer
heavy leverage to force workers to stay.

Abuse of H-1B extends across the industry, including the large
U.S. mainstream firms., facilitated by the nation's top
immigration law firms. It does NOT occur primarily in the Indian
"body shops," and it DOES occur in the hiring of international
students from U.S. university campuses.

The underpayment of H-1Bs is well-established fact, not rumor,
anecdote or ideology. It has been confirmed by two
congressionally-commissioned reports, and a number of academic studies,
in both statistical and qualitative analyses.

Even former software industry entrepreneur CEO Vivek Wadhwa, now a
defender of foreign worker programs who is quoted often in the press and
who has testified to Congress in favor of expansion of the programs, has
confessed,

I know from my experience as a tech CEO that H-1Bs are cheaper than
domestic hires. Technically, these workers are supposed to be paid a
"prevailing wage," but this mechanism is riddled with loopholes.

I was one of the first [CEOs] to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the
U.S.A. Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper.

Even Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the most strident advocate of the H-1B program
Congress has ever had, now realizes that H-1B is used for cheap labor,
in full compliance with the law. She concedes that
the program is undercutting American workers:

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose Congressional district includes
Silicon Valley, framed the wage issue at the hearing, sharing the
response to her request for some wage numbers from the U.S. Department
of Labor.
Lofgren said that the average wage for computer systems analysts in her
district is $92,000, but the U.S. government prevailing wage rate for
H-1B workers in the same job currently stands at $52,000, or $40,000
less.
"Small wonder there's a problem here," said Lofgren. "We can't have
people coming in and undercutting the American educated workforce."

(Lofgren's 2011 reform bill, however, would not have fixed the situation, and
would add an equally-harmful automatic green card program. In addition,
Lofgren's bill implicitly singles out the Indian IT services as the main
offender, disgraceful and absolutely inaccurate scapegoating.)